The Effect of Economic Freedom and its Components on Social Capital (Case Study: Countries with Different Degrees of Freedom)
Subject Areas : Economic
Asana Babrzadeh
1
,
Roohollah Babaki
2
*
,
Seyyed Hamed Fahimifard
3
1 - Master's degree, Department of Economics, Faculty of Humanities, University of Bojnord, Bojnord, Iran
2 - Assistant Professor, Department of Economics, Faculty of Humanities, University of Bojnord, Bojnord, Iran
3 - PhD, Department of Economics, Faculty of Administrative Sciences and Economics, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Mashhad, Iran
Keywords: Economic Freedom, Social Capital, Freedom House, Generalized Method of Moments (GMM).,
Abstract :
Today, in addition to economic and human capital, social capital has also gained attention to, providing a suitable foundation for the utilization of human and physical capital and leads to economic growth. Through this, cohesion, mutual trust, assurance and solidarity in the society are estabilished, and any reduction in it leads to an increase of social harms within the community. On the other hand, economic freedom is the most crusial element in society that can open the doors to global prosperity. It can be interpereted as the fundamental right of every individual to manage their own property and resources, as well as the absence of monopolies in production, consumption. and services. Since the theoretical relationship between economic freedom and social capital is ambiguous, this relationship should be empirically examained in various samples. Therefore, the aim of this research is to investigate the effect of economic freedom and its components on social capital using the generalized method of moments (GMM). This study utilizes data of 62 member countries of the Freedom House, categorized into three groups: free, relatively free and non-free according to Freedom House, during the period of 2013-2020. The results indicate that economic freedom in free countries increases social capital; consequently, it has a positive and significant effect on social capital. However, it does not have a significant effect on social capital in relatively free countries and non-free countries. Additionally, the relationship between the components of economic freedom and social capital varies.
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سایت¬های اینترنتی:
خانه آزادي: https://freedomhouse.org
مؤسسه فریزر: https://www.fraserinstitute.org